‘Joma dok notora koopeniti.’
Thus a voice.
‘Joma, joma!’
Insistent. Urging.
‘Sleeps you?’
That much intelligible. In Ashmarlan foreignly voiced.
‘Sleeps?’
A boot. Hard.
Chegory lay still, pretending to be dead. Then a hand grabbed his hair. A full handful of it. Yanked. Hard. He could pretend no longer, hence lurched from the ground. He was seized immediately. His arm wrenched back in an armlock. His arm? Right arm! But that was gone, gone, gone, torn and missing, brutalised by a shark, by the bare and barren jaws of a shark free-swimming through the air itself. Wasn’t that so?
No.
That had been but a hallucination.
He had breathed of zen, had he not?
He had.
That much he remembered.
Ah yes, it was coming back to him. The temple of the shark-god Elasmokarcharos. Set up in the manner often described to him by men who had been, who had seen, who had dared. Ancient amphorae from which issued a choking smoke. The smoke of zen, the herb which ruptures reality.
‘Are you listening?’
Hard voice emphasised by a slap.
‘I’m deaf,’ said Chegory, who had been too full of relief for his recovered right arm to pay attention to the lean and elderly Ashdan who had been addressing him in garbled Ashmarlan.
‘But you hear me now? Right?’
A shake.
‘I hear you,’ said Chegory.
He was released from the armlock. As if in reward. Then questioned.
‘Very well! Who are you?’
Chegory summed his interogator. Ashdan. Old. Eyes hard, fierce, tired, impatient, desperate. A young one with him, Ashdan likewise. Oh, and a third. A big man, not surpassingly tall but broad as a barrel.
These three he recognised from Shabble’s description of adventures Downstairs. These must be the pirates who had stolen the wishstone from the treasury! Shabble had played with them for much of a night, driving them to and fro through the underground mazeways. Then they had escaped their captor when the foolish imitator of suns had slept, trusting them to meanwhile stay put.
Pirates, then.
Pirates of the Malud, from Asral, where life is hard and often short. He must remember that they thought of themselves as the Malud and would take great offence if they were called Ashdans, even though those two peoples were in physical terms identical. What else did he know about Asral? Ingalawa had been there, and claimed it was ‘I said,’ said the old man, enunciating his words with great care, ‘I said, who are you?’
From the way he spoke Chegory knew his own life might prove exceedingly short unless he came up with a satisfactory reply, and shortly.
‘I’m Chegory Guy,’ he said, in Ashmarlan far better than that of his interrogator. ‘I work for Jon Qasaba in the Dromdanjerie. That’s our madhouse, in case you didn’t know. I’m down here looking for Orge Arat. He’s a lunatic. He escaped. He’s loose with an axe. He’s dangerous as seven hells or seventy dragons ravening.’
‘As dangerous as what?’ said the old man, not understanding this last complexity.
‘He’s dangerous dangerous!’ said Chegory, urging a touch of the frantic into his voice. ‘We’d better get out of here, out of here fast, he’s killed Qasaba already, there were five of us, now one, myself alone, sole survivor, the man with the axe he did for the others, hacked off arms, off heads, off fegs.’
‘Soboro mo?’ asked the young Ashdan.
‘Dab an narito,’ answered the old man.
‘Para-para. Al-ran Lars,’ said the big man.
‘Tolon! Skimara!’
That from the old man. While they discoursed thus, Chegory was scrutinising his surroundings. He was in a tight-curving corridor. Underfoot was a luxuriant growth of black grass which rustled when stepped on. Overhead, warm grey lights. The pirates continued to dialogue in their incomprehensible argot, presumably the Malud which ruled all conversation on far-distant Asral.
Chegory listened. Hard. Above and below the meaningless pirate talk he heard a thin high whine. Soft, soft and distant. Something rumbling. Low, ominous. Muted thunder. Rumbling this way. Rumbling that. Pausing. Then onrumbling further yet. An intestinal grumbling sourced somewhere in the walls. Some kind of animal there? Or water or some other fluid forcing itself through tangling pipes?
‘Did you hear me?’
Thus the elderly pirate.
Emphasising his query with a slap.
‘Deaf!’ said Chegory, a touch of genuine panic to his voice. ‘Deaf, I’m deaf!’
‘Dandrak! But now you hear!’
‘Yes yes yes, we’ve been through that. Okay. What do you want? You want me to get you out of here? I know the way, I can take you up, out, wherever you want to go.’
‘Good,’ said the pirate. ‘That’s what I wanted to know. Very well. Since you know the way, lead on.’
So Chegory was off again, once more bluffing diligently as he feigned full knowledge of the labyrinth through which he led the pirates who had thieved the wishstone and who (surely) still had it in their possession.
Could he get it off them?
He began thinking, hoping, planning, speculating. If he could triumph that spoil away from them he’d be a hero to all Injiltaprajura. Praise him with great praises! Chegory the Great! Hail him a hero!
‘You sure you know where we’re going?’ said the elderly pirate as Chegory hesitated at an intersection.
‘This way, this way,’ said Chegory hastily.
So saying he led them on through light, through darkness and into light yet further still. He had quite lost track of time. Was it undokondra still? Or bardardomootha? Or had the sun bells rung out to announce istarlat’s start? He had no idea, just as he had no idea how far he had wandered through the territory of shadow and nightmare. But what he did know was that he thirsted and hungered, his thews were aching and his mind was near boggled by fatigue.
He could not remember when he had last seen or smelt sewage. The absence of the human waste suggested they were deep, deep underground, far below the surface of Injiltaprajura. Or maybe somewhere under the Laitemata Harbour. There was no sign of vampire rats in these odourless corridors, either, which again indicated that they were deep indeed.
Stairs. Thafs what I need. Stairs to go up.
Luck then favoured young Chegory with a find in the form of a stairway leading upwards. He took it. Up they went. A mere thirty steps took them to a landing where they had the choice of taking a narrow, unpromising side tunnel lit by a dull purple light. Chegory spared it barely a glance then went on and up. Another landing, another side tunnel. Still the same purple light within. Likewise on the third landing. The fourth. The fifth. The sixth. By which time Chegory was panting and sweating, his heart playing at hammers in his chest. He was sorely troubled to find himself so fatigued so quickly. It told him his physical reserves were nearly exhausted by hunger, dehydration, labour and lack of sleep.
Up to the seventh landing they went.
There misfortune befell young Chegory and his companions, for a squad of soldiers rushed them from the side tunnel which there debouched. The soldiers were armoured well and armed with spears, hence the pirates had no option but to discard their weapons and surrender.
Then curt commands were issued and a most reluctant Chegory Guy was escorted up the stairs in the company of his Asral-born companions. He knew their captors were soldiers of Justina’s palace guard. Their uniforms and accoutrements left him in no doubt about that. Doubdess they had been scouring the depths Downstairs in an effort to capture at least some of the looters who had robbed Injiltaprajura’s treasury.
This means execution. At the very least!
So thought Chegory.
Then they reached the top of the stairs and were marshalled at spearpoint into a vast cellerage illuminated by cold lights overhead which shone harsh and bright on a scene of industrious activity. Those few shadows which survived were sheltering under big, heavy barrels. Workers were decanting the contents of these containers into jugs, urns, amphorae and botdes. In the air was a smell which Chegory knew to be that of alcohol.
Justina’s guards were everywhere in evidence.
Chegory did not quite understand what was going on here. Obviously this was a secret warehouse for the distribution of drugs, an underground equivalent of Firfat Labrat’s warehouse in Marthandorthan. But what then were the guards doing? Was this a raid? If so, why was work proceeding as usual? And who was this tall white-skinned man now approaching?
Was it…?
Could it be…?
Yes, it was!
The now-near newcomer with pink eyes and alabaster skin was none other than the wonderworker Aquitaine Varazchavardan, Master of Law to the Empress Justina of Untunchilamon, the dignitary whom Chegory had last met when the sorcerer had come to Jod to interrupt Ivan Pokrov’s lunch with queries about the Analytical Engine. Varazchavardan was still wearing the same silken ceremonial robes alive with dragons ultramarine and incarnadine. As the sorcerer drew near, Chegory made reverence in the Janjuladoola manner.
‘Aha!’ said Varazchavardan, ‘so it’s-’
The pirates moved.
A hand-signal from the eldest threw them into action.
The muscle man grabbed Chegory Guy and hurled him at the guarding spearmen, skittling them. The elderly pirate whipped out a hidden blade, triced Varazchavardan into his clutches then pressed steel to trachea.
‘Keep back!’ yelled Varazchavardan. ‘Keep back, or he’ll kill me!’
But skitded guardsmen were already scrambling to their feet, scrabbling for their fallen weapons. The muscle man picked up a cask of alcohol and hurled it. Then threw another, which burst on impact. Chegory rolled out of the way of a third, picked himself up and dodged a fourth.
Swiftly the throat-threatening pirate dragged his hostage Varazchavardan toward the top of the stairwell. Chegory hobbled after the fast-retreating pirates, splashing through spilt liquor as he went. What alternative did he have? To stay and be arrested. Or killed out of hand! Soldiers followed cautiously. The ancient clutching Varazchavardan let his knife tease a little blood from the albino’s skin. The sorcerer screamed at his men.
‘You want me dead? Get back, you fools! Get back!’
In response, one optimist hurled a knife, thinking he could skewer the pirate who had the Master of Law in his dutches. The knife went wide. Varazchavardan swore. This called for desperate measures!
'Richardia rincus rident!’ he gasped.
A shock of purple flame flashed from his body. It blasted away the throat-threatening pirate. Varazchavardan was free! But the same flames ignited a sea of spilt alcohol. Varazchavardan fled, howling, beating at the flames swift-flaring from his embroidered dragons as fire swarmed up his silken robes. The muscleman pirate had already scooped up the elderly one and was sprinting for the stairs. The youngest of the Malud marauders was hot on his heels, with Chegory Guy close behind.
By the time they gained the stairs the cavernous warehouse was a lurid theatre of dragon-mouthed incineration. Down the stairs they pounded, fleeing the holocaust. First landing. Second. Third. Fourth. Fifth. Thunder roared behind them as barrels of liquor began to explode in the inferno.
Still down the steps they ran.
‘Omora sora!’ gasped Chegory, pausing on the sixth landing to pant for breath.
This phrase will not be translated, for it was voiced in his native Dub and is therefore axiomatically obscene since it is impossible to say anything in that tongue which has fewer than three unseemly connotations.
While Chegory was so pausing and panting, the pirates were still pounding down the stairs. Chegory knew he must hurry else he would get left behind. But — wasn’t that what he wanted in any case? Of course it was! He had no desire whatsoever to keep the company of these desperate killers for a moment longer than he had to. Decision then was instantaneous. He ducked into the narrow side tunnel and began striding out as best he could to put the greatest possible distance between himself and all potential pursuers.
Down the tunnel of purple light went Chegory Guy. He took a left turn then a right. The tunnel broadened. The light changed from purple to lemon. All was quiet, quiet, quiet. Then he began to hear a rhythmical thumping shattering crashing up ahead. On he went, for he thought he knew what it was.
He was right.
The noise was being made by another ice machine dumping huge blocks of ice into chambers already littered with the same. Ice white bright ensnared the colours of lights of red, green and blue downshining from above. Cold, it was cold, the delicious shock of such cold thrilled him into wakefulness, cleared his head, made him sharper, stronger, readier.
His thirst craved immediate appeasement, but such melt water as there was drained away through grilles in the floor so there were no potable pools awaiting. Instead, Chegory must perforce crunch the cold, cold ice between his teeth then swallow the shattered slurry. Soon the mounting burden of fractured ice in his belly was beginning to cause him discomfort. He durst not eat more lest overconsumption led to cramps or stomach upsets.
Fatigue was regaining the ascendancy. The initial excitement of discovering the ice (and thus of being saved from thirsting to death) was wearing off. He backed off from the ice and settled himself in an ice-cooled corridor, meaning to rest for a little before he went on. Instead, he slipped off to sleep, for he was far too tired to be kept awake merely by the rocksliding downfalls of ice.
It was cold which woke him.
He found himself shivering. Goose-pimples on his skin. He hugged himself, slapped his arms and thighs, then returned to the ice stack to gnaw more concrete water, thinking it best to stock up before he resumed his march.
Cold, it was cold, bitter cold, he had not been so cold since… yes, since last year’s flying fish expedition. He had gone out in a local fishing canoe by night. Ox No Zan had been with him, and Olivia Qasaba, and a dozen others, most of them fishermen. Night, and moon on the rippling sea. Flaring torches. Olivia squealing with excitement. Flying fish kicking in the toe-deep water in the bottom on the canoe. Then the long journey back, a lean wind driving the sail and stripping the warmth from their exhausted bodies. He had been truly cold by the time they reached shore, and had remembered it long after since chills of any description were so rare on Untunchilamon.
With ice eaten, Chegory was ready to march. On he went, taking things nice and slow. Then he stopped. What was it, that thing lying in the middle of the tunnel? A nasty, grisly piece of shrivelled black. A banana skin! A banana skin long dead, admittedly, but sign of human life nevertheless, unless one was to presume one of Injiltaprajura’s monkeys had wandered this far into the deeps with a piece of fruit in hand.
‘Saved,’ muttered Chegory, for he was sure he must be nearing an exit.
Fatigue fled in the face of excitement, as it had on his discovery of the ice which had so recently (this was how he thought of it, though he was doubtless overdramatising the situation somewhat) saved his life. His stride lengthened as he stepped out smartly, eager to see what was ahead.
The tunnel down which he strode was pierced to left and right by ovoid doorways opening on empty chambers. Chegory glanced in each as he passed it, and was rewarded when he spotted further signs of human life in the tenth to the right. Rubbish rubbish rubbish! Oh most welcome sight! Among the mingled triflings of garbage were a few pieces of broken coconut shell. The carapaces of a couple of land crabs. A small, discrete dumping of turds. A bit of dried-out banana leaf, perhaps used as the wrapping for a handful of rice or rations similar. A few lumps of charcoal remaining from a fire.
‘Someone camped here,’ said Chegory. ‘Or rested here, at least. Ice miners, maybe.’
The amount of rubbish suggested people had been here often, as did the state of the walls, which past visitors had liberally graffitographed with charcoal sketches of the postures of lust — the fluid strokes of the said sketches suggesting that easy artistry which comes from long and diligent practice. There too young Chegory saw, among an overlay of names and slogans, a few scribbled equations. Familiar were these indeed, for they were couched in the inscrutable elegance of Thaldonian Mathematics. Had Ivan Pokrov been this way? Quite possibly. But Chegory was unlikely to find him round the next corner, particularly since the charcoal marks could have been there for anything from a day to fifty thousand years or more.
Chegory picked up one of the pieces of coconut shell. A few tiny, dessicated fragments of dried coconut meat adhered yet to the brown-black rind. He scratched them off with a thumbnail still black from his rock gardening. Licked them up. Food food food! He drooled at memories of the last lunch he had eaten. Sea slugs and flying fish. Right now he would happily have killed for another such meal. Or any meal.
‘Soonest out, soonest fed,’ muttered Chegory.
He tossed the coconut shell over his shoulder. It clattered on the metal underfoot. Chegory scratched through the rest of the rubbish. Nothing there. Nothing to eat, anyway.
He picked up a piece of charcoal then began to write on the wall. He wrote in Ashmarlan for that was the sole language he could read and write, since nobody had thought to learn him his letters till he started to board with Jon Qasaba at the Dromdanjerie, and thereafter the language of his education had naturally been that of his Ashdan tutors.
[Here an anomaly. Ashmolea’s language of scholarship is not the demotic Ashmarlan but the elegant Slandolin, language of Formal Literature and High Art, hence surely Guy’s tutors would have educated him in Slandolin. Does the Originator of the Text err in ignorance? Or is this but an absent-minded slip of the pen? Or is one to presume that the Ebrell Islander Guy was found by his tutors to be incapable of attaining mastery of Slandolin? Quite possibly, since the Originator notes that Guy was, in technical terms, ignorant of any language whatsoever. Scholars should bear in mind ambiguities such as this whenever they encounter a passage in which the Originator is sufficiently hubristic as to lay claim to omniscience. Sot Dawbler, School of Commentary.]
THALDONIAN MATHEMATICS SUCKS RED RULES, OK? AQUITAINE VARAZCHAVARDAN ZABAGRUBS PIGS OLIVIA OLIVIA OLIVIA URI THE VALOROUS WAS HERE JUSTINA LOVES VAZZY. THEODORA LOVES. AND LOVES. AND LOVES.
Here is, first, conclusive proof that Chegory Guy had at least some awareness of what went on in Justina’s pink palace. He knew of the albinotic ape Vazzy which the Empress held in such high regard and he had heard at least a rumour or two of the scandal surrounding the life of Justina’s twin sister, the famous Theodora. What is here secondly demonstrated is the essential bankruptcy of the notion of ‘educating’ an Ebrell Islander. Once Chegory Guy learnt to read and write did he act as an educated man? Did he enter upon politics or the law, or [Here a lengthy tirade against Ebrell Islanders and the stupidity of ‘educating’ them has been deleted on the grounds of redundancy. Conclusive proof of the moral degeneracy and intellectual insufficiency of this subhuman breed has appeared in this Text already. There is no need to reproduce further Comments by the Originator on this subject, particularly when one begins to suspect some of these Comments are Originated not for purposes of advancing scholarship and enhancing the world’s enlightenment but merely to allow the Originator an arena in which to display intellectual prowess, or a misguided ‘wit’ which the Originator equates with such prowess. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]
With his works of literary composition completed, Chegory Guy pocketed some spare charcoal in case he was once more beglamoured by inspiration, then onward he went, soon entering on a huge vaulted hall shod with tessellating tiles cast in three dozen different patterns. Blue and green were the tiles and metal was their substance. Their unity was pierced by half a thousand transparent tubes ascending from floor to ceiling. Fluids flowed within those tubes. Some were clear, doubtless bearing water to feed the fountains which watered Injiltaprajura so generously. Others were stained with colour. A couple did young Chegory recognise — the grey of shlug and the bile-green of dikle. But what was that thick fermented black? That blue made to rival the sky? That ominous red, darker yet than bloodstone? That yellow as bright as the lethal sun scorpion of Zolabrik?
‘Here mystery,’ said Chegory.
With all enquiry thus dismissed he onward went, caring not for the solution of the mystery. He was, remember, but an ignorant Ebrell Islander with a lust for raw survival, not a philosophic scholar with a taste for knowledge and enquiry. Surely any reputable encyclopaedist (yourself, for instance, dear reader) would under the circumstances have stayed to Examine the tubes, to Speculate on their Origins and their Outfalls, and to make notes in order to be able later to Account. But Chegory Guy did no such thing. Instead, he went hunting for a way of escape.
[While one does not wish to deprecate the scholarly impulse in any way, it must nevertheless be noted that the valuation of intellectual enquiry to which the Originator has made a commitment in terms of autogenerated commentary on the above geophysiopsychic scenario is excessive in objectified terms which take into account the presumed extrapolations in regard to survival expectations which the scenario subject would have been making with at least a partial appreciation of the normative consequences of psychobiological stress (such as a shortfall in terms of bio-environmental substance exchange in the input mode and, equally important, deprivation of required regenerative therapy in the form of subjective experience of nonconscious brain modes) and of the implications of such consequences with respect to global performance factors. While precise medicometrical quantification is impossible on the basis of Textual analysis alone, the Originator’s apparent valourisation of speculative enquiry and data acquisition as absolute goods always to be set above the pursuit of socioindividual integration and the preservation of biological integrity is indicative of a failure to rationalise the tension between purely subjective supra-mundane conceptual freedom and statistically probable biosociopolitical outcomes in favour of a normative accommodation with objectified reality. While neither genetic deficiency nor exobiopsychically sourced transmundane manipulation can be definitively discounted as elements causative of this syndrome, the weight of theory coupled with realtime experience gained from extensive praxis in the context of the client-therapist nexus supports the conclusion that inadequate parenting is the ultimative cause of the psychic disturbance which led to the display of the sociomedicolegalistically maladaptive behaviour which resulted in the Originator being subjected to non-voluntary therapy in an institution for non-normative individuals. To put all this in simple layman’s terms, my conclusions are that the psychosocial maladaptation which led to the Originator being incarcerated in a lunatic asylum is predicated upon a sociopathological lack of any sense of proportion, and I blame the parents. Eshambultung Tafun-groid, Phrenologist-in-Chief of the Board of Scrutiny, Psychometrician Extraordinary and Head of the Committee of Norms.]
[Perhaps. But who cares? Oris Baumgage, Fact Checker Minor.]
[An inexcusable flippancy! Noted, and to be punished in due course. Jonquiri 0, Disciplinarian Superior.]
[While Yafungroid is not to be lightly dismissed, scholars should nevertheless note that shortly after completing his extensive annotations to this Text the eminent Phrenologist died of a surfeit of lampreys admixed with the Extract of Opium to which he was notoriously addicted. Sot Dawbler, School of Commentary.]
[Sot Dawbler implies that Yafungroid suffered mental degeneration as a consequence of overindulgence in the Balm of Souls. But what of it? Should we care if Yafungroid was brain-damaged? His field was the study of the mad. Set a thief to catch a thief, a lunatic to catch a lunatic! I accept Yafungroid’s conclusions in full and wish only that I could aspire to the magisterial magnificence of his style. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]
As Chegory looked for a way of escape he faced a multiplicity of choice. There were, all in all, forty-seven doorways out of that hallway. Young Chegory did not count them but I know it to be so for I have been to the very place myself during my own researches Downstairs. Indeed, you must remember that at every point this history is supported and enhanced by my own detailed and longstanding knowledge of both the participants and the theatre of action.
Thus I can tell you of a certainty that the one doorway which issued on to a flight of stairs was one armspan wide and thrice that in height; that the stairs themselves were of an incorruptible metal unaccountably percolated by multiple holes, each hole being the size of a finger hole; that one climbs 170 steps in all to reach a large, circular chamber made of equally incorruptible plax; and, further, that from this Chamber seventeen tunnels wheelspoke outwards.
Chegory found the stairs, climbed them and reached the chamber with its seventeen-fold choices.
Where now?
He chose a tunnel at random and set off down it, charcoaling the occasional mark on the walls so he would be able to find his way back if he ran into a dead end or danger.
As he walked, he began to worry. Had Aquitaine Varazchavardan recognised him? He doubted that Varazchavardan knew him by name. Nevertheless, Justina’s Master of Law might remember seeing young Chegory on Jod, in which case he would know where to start looking for a name. Gods, what a mess!
‘Still,’ said Chegory, ‘it was quite funny, really.’
It was not funny at all. It was an unmitigated disaster. Nevertheless, Chegory allowed himself a little Shabble-like snigger when he recalled Varazchavardan slapping at his burning robes. Fool of a sorcerer! To set his own liquor alight by exercise of magic!
His own liquor?
Chegory corrected his mental slip. That had not been Varazchavardan’s liquor. That had been the property of some foul unscrupulous drug dealer. And Varazchavardan, well, he must have been leading a raid on the place.
‘Great,’ said Chegory, with dry irony. ‘I’m a wanted man. Incinerator of soldiers. Consort of drug dealers. Fugitive prisoner. Looter. Rioter. And now I’ve got enemies in high places to boot! What worse could happen?’
Much, as he found out before he had taken another three footsteps. Lights dimmed, lights darkened, then violet shadows rose around him, weaving, writhing, sharpening into monsters with glaucous eyes and jacinth teeth. One glance at their slavering jaws told him they were car-nivorously inclined. He had no time to scream before they were upon him.
Razorblade teeth bore at his raw flesh, shattered his bones, ripped open his gut then sliced his orchids in half with a lacerating pain which sent him swooning into unconsciousness.
For some time he knew nothing.
Then, blunder by blunder, he began to recover thought and sensation both. He was walking. His eyes were open a crack. Grey light hinted at walls, floor, a door past which he strode.
‘Stop walking,’ he told himself.
But his legs made progress without him. Strong legs they were, hardened to labour by toilsome labours in the rockfields of Jod. His arms immobile at his sides. Strength he had in those arms, the mighty strength which comes from sledgehammering rocks and ruthlessly pursuing sparetime practice with a killing blade. But he was powerless to control that strength.
I am an Engine.
Thus he thought, comparing himself to Ivan Pokrov’s Analytical Engine, remorselessly driven by coded algorithms, exercising operations of the most complex precision without possession so much as a shred of free will.
By an extreme effort of such will he at last succeeded in closing his eyes.
Now I will…
Now he would nothing.
Will and consciousness blundered away together. His eyes cracked open again. A part of Chegory’s brain which in truth could scarcely be called Chegory needed sight that it might control the passage of his corpse through the underworld beneath Injiltaprajura. It is scarcely extravagant to think of Chegory as being just then a corpse, for, though his body breathed, walked, and possessed both blood and a heartbeat, no will was resident in his flesh. No will, no thought, no sentience.
By the time sentience, will and consciousness returned, Chegory’s automative fit was long since over. He found himself lying in the dark. Vampire rats! Downstairs, dark meant rats. Were there any? He listened carefully for scrabbles or squeaks. Heard none. Nevertheless his heart was racing. He had been asleep, asleep and helpless, quite unconscious and at the mercy of any four-legged marauder. In the dark Downstairs that could have been suicide.
He stood up, wincing as something went grik! in his spine. He flexed his back cautiously. It was okay. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. Sought light but saw not the slightest leam. Instead, dark absolute, a smothering black velvet shrouding all. Was he blind?
He clicked his fingers. The quality of the echoes suggested he was in an underground room. Quite a large room. He was surprised. Thanks to the dark, he had got the impression he was confined in some place no larger than a coffin. He felt around. Barrels. A smell of — alcohol!
Gods!
Here… a board. Something… something soft. Friable.
Too coherent to be turd. Lift it. Smell. Cheese. Not the goat cheese from the vats of Beldysobros, sole local supplier. No, this was imported stuff. Very nice, too. Needed that. More? No, just metal. Ow! Sharp. Knife. Good.
Chegory tested his new-found knife then slipped it into the larger of his boot sheaths. He’d need it if he ran up against vampire rats. Or Malud marauders. Or mad elven lords with strange foreign companions. Idly he wondered what had become of his best-beloved fighting blade, his skewer-shiv and his knuckle-lance, lost when soldiers had stripped him of that protection when they arrested him outside the Dromdanjerie.
Okay. Explanations.
How had he got here?
Sleepwalking.
Sleepwalking? Hardly!
Zen.
That was his next thought.
Flashback.
Got it in three!
Indeed, Chegory now realised exactly what had happened. He had breathed of the zen burning in the amphorae in the temple of Elasmokarcharos, shark-god of the Dagrin. The hallucinogenic herb had made him imagine that the jaws of shark floated through the air to tear away his arm. Later, he had made a temporary recovery. However, some time afterwards he had been overwhelmed by the phenomenon known as flashback.
Zen is a strange drug for, unlike alcohol or opium, its effects do not dissipate in direct relation to time. Instead, once one has used the drug the potential exists for sudden, untimely recurrences of the initial drugshock. Hallucinations may partially or totally swamp the sensorium. Worse, the drug may lead to the acting out of desires known or unknown, to murder or rape, incest or arson, shark-swimming or suicide.
In Chegory’s case, his one overwhelming desire had been to get the hell out of the mazeways Downstairs, and this was the desire the drug had activated when it had reduced him to an unthinking zombie.
Okay. What now?
He was still tired. Very very tired. Else the knowledge of his vulnerability to horrifying flashbacks would have had him running round in circles screaming in terror. As it happened, he was so shagged out he did little more than acknowledge his vulnerability as a last refining touch to his day of disaster.
Fatigue suggested sleep.
What else could he do?
Was there anything to be gained from a quick release from imprisonment Downstairs?
No.
Since so many prisoners had escaped from the treasury with so much loot there would doubtless be dozens of soldiers scouring the underground mazeways right now, so there was scarcely any point in Chegory rushing to the pink palace to advise the authorities that the pirates who had thieved the wishstone were still below decks. If a search could catch those Malud marauders then it would. Nobody caught Downstairs at a time like this would be presumed innocent, so there was no reason for Chegory to dare his life into the sunlight just so he could accuse the wayward foreigners.
Meantime, he was safest here.
Safe from hunting soldiers?
Probably, since he had stumbled into some storeroom for liquor. Such places were chosen by experts for their invulnerability to search.
But what if said experts find me in my sleep?
There was a risk of that, true. But life had become so dangerous, so fraught with peril, so stressed and unpredictable that Chegory accounted that little additional risk as next to nothing.
He sat back against a liquor barrel, closed his eyes and promptly dropped off to sleep.
Elsewhere, in the Temple of Torture in Goldhammer Street which was serving as a detention centre, Shabble burnt free of a clay pot at a bottom of a well. Steam boiled out of the well as Shabble ascended, shining bright and singing brighter yet.
It was night. Soon the sun would rise and the sun bells would ring out from the belfries at the four corners of the pink palace to announce the end of bardardomootha and the start of istarlat. But, for the moment, dark reigned, and Shabble’s localised attempts to subvert that legitimate reign drew protests from adherents of the ruling regime.
‘Blow out the light, you nuk!’ screamed an angry fishwife. ‘I blow out not,’ said Shabble. ‘I’m a candle not.’ Torrential abuse followed, as if Fistavlir had ended and the long-awaited trade winds had brought downfalling curses rather than downfalling water. Shabble, entirely unperturbed by this onslaught, darted about the temple, seeking friends.
‘Oh, there you are, there you are,’ said Shabble, shining sun-bright light on a comatose Ivan Pokrov.
The head of the Analytical Institute woke. Stared at Shabble. Mumbled incoherently. Then Artemis Ingalawa said, in very wide awake tones:
‘Shabble! Get out of here! Vanish!’
She Who Must Be Obeyed was obeyed. Shabble’s light dimmed immediately to nothing and the demonic one soared up, up, up into the night sky. The humid darkness of Injiltaprajura and of the polluted Laitemata fell away below. All Untunchilamon came in sight, a mass of dark within dark, reaching away for league upon league from Justina’s capital to the desolations of the north.
Higher and still higher yet flew Shabble, ascending imaginary mountains in nary more than a couple of heartbeats. Exulting in pure speed flew Shabble. So does the dolphin exult when from the water it explodes in joy shimmering. So does the dragon rejoice when in its strength it holds the heights then plunges, diving with a scream, with power ferocious, with speed controlled and absolute precision, terror matched to beauty as it stoops. Up rose Shabble in such triumph until the very curvature of the planetary surface was clearly to be perceived, and the sun also, the sun of the new day.
Then sang Shabble, then Shabble sang, louder and then louder yet, pouring out music unheard for twenty thousand years, rejoicing in the Symphony of the Sun, a song of joy to exult and honour all those who argue with mortality, a paean of praise for the will to be and to become, for ambition unlimited, audacity vaulting and the triumph of the moment.
Shabble rose yet higher. Singing singing singing to the rising sun, the local star, the star itself delighting as it sang with a song fiercer and braver yet than any known to creatures of the flesh, its joy a blaze of energy unleashed, exploding light outburning in vacuum wastelands a hundred million luzacs distant.
Glory to life!
Glory to us and our becoming!
And to the sun, glory!
And to the rising sun, glory!
Thus Shabble, singing as if to rival the sun itself.
Non servium.